CINAHL provides indexing for over 2,931 journals from the fields of nursing and allied health. The database contains more than 1,000,000 records dating back to 1981. It offers complete coverage of English-language nursing journals and publications from the National League for Nursing and the American Nurses’ Association, CINAHL covers nursing, biomedicine, health sciences librarianship, alternative/complementary medicine, consumer health and 17 allied health disciplines.
Examples of titles offered in CINAHL include: AANA Journal, California Hospitals, Gastroenterology Nursing, Maternal and Child Health Journal, Paediatric Nursing, Parents, etc. In addition, this database offers access to health care books, nursing dissertations, selected conference proceedings, standards of practice, educational software, audiovisuals and book chapters. Searchable cited references for more than 1,200 journals are also included.
Full text material includes 70 journals plus legal cases, clinical innovations, critical paths, drug records, research instruments and clinical trials.
Search tips:
- The CINAHL Subject Headings authority file is a controlled vocabulary thesaurus that assists in more effectively searching the CINAHL database. Each bibliographic reference in the database is associated with a set of subject terms that are assigned to describe the content of an article. There are more than 10,600 main subject headings as well as thousands of cross-references that assist in finding the most appropriate subject heading. CINAHL subject heading terms are arranged in a hierarchy, or "tree structure", that permits searching at various levels of detail from the most general level to more narrow levels to find the most precise terms. The headings can be exploded to retrieve all references indexed to that term as well as all references indexed to any narrower term(s). Searches can also be limited with specific qualifiers (subheadings) to improve the precision of the search, and limited to major subject headings indicate the main focus of an article. To search these subject headings click on the words CINAHL Headings in the green bar near the top of the page.
- The wildcard is represented by a question mark ?. To use the wildcard, enter your search terms and replace each unknown character with a ?. EBSCOhost finds all citations of that word with the ? replaced by a letter. For example, type ne?t to find all citations containing neat, nest or next. Truncation is represented by an asterisk (*). To use truncation, enter the root of a search term and replace the ending with an *. EBSCOhost finds all forms of that word. For example, type comput* to find the words computer or computing.
- To export items to the RefWorks software, click on add to folder by the items you want to include. When you are ready to export them to RefWorks, click on the word folder at the top of the page. Then click on the word export and select direct export to RefWorks. Finally, click on the word save. This will open a window to allow you to log in to your RefWorks account and complete the export.
Where is it: Go to the UNLV Libraries' home page http://www.library.unlv.edu. Select the Articles and Databases tab, click on the A-Z List of Databases and then on the letter C and select CINAHL.
Quick Link: http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?authtype=ip,uid&profile=ehost&defaultdb=cin20